Cranford committee tweaks new sewer fees

CRANFORD — After hearing complaints from some property owners, Cranford’s township committee has tweaked the way it calculates a new sewer fee in its plan to separate the cost from the tax levy.

The new fees would be based directly on the assessed value of properties — $171 for the owner of the township average home assessed at $181,740, Mayor Mark Smith said.

The township had previously planned a fee structure that would have charged most homeowners $190, said finance commissioner Mark Dugan.

The committee went back to the drawing board after commercial property owners complained that the fee structure would penalize landlords with many small business tenants.

The committee separated the fees from the municipal property tax levy supporting Cranford’s $32.3 million budget to keep the levy from rising more than 4 percent, the state limit.

“It allowed us to stay under the 4 percent cap without totally eviscerating municipal staff and services,” Dugan said at a township committee meeting Tuesday night.

Combined with the regular tax levy, the increase on the average home would be around $185, Smith said. Based on 2009 estimates from the township tax collector, the increase would put the average total tax bill at around $8,905.

Public affairs commissioner Dan Aschenbach lambasted the rest of the committee for supporting the accounting maneuver while including in the budget a $100,000 down payment for property acquisition and for not raising municipal parking rates.

“We seem to forget that a major portion of the crisis Cranford is facing is part of a state aid cut,” he said, noting next year’s budget woes will be more severe if the state decreases the limit on municipal tax increases to 2.5 percent.